Rashmi Bagchi Sarkar 1968–current
East meets East in the art of Rashmi Bagchi Sarkar. A student of Kala Bhavan, Santiniketan, Rashmi expanded her repertoire with a stint at Saga University of Fine Art in Kyoto, Japan, becoming proficient in the Nihonga style of traditional Japanese painting. Rashmi is currently working on a rare mode of tempera painting made of crushed semiprecious stones, at times mixed with layers of plated silver and gold. In Rashmi’s art the creative energy of Mother Nature forms the central construct. She presents a feminine perspective which is sensitive and powerful. Her medium fits perfectly with her expression—layered, soft and tender.

Every Small Thing is Yours
(iwa-enogu) stone pigment, animal glue over cotton stretched
on panel (diptych) | 182.8cm x 152.5cm (each)
72" x 60" (each) | 2007 | Con No. 4579

Split of Continuity
(iwa-enogu) stone pigment, animal glue over treated canvas(diptych)
106.5cm x 91cm (each) | 42" x 36" (each) | 2007 | Con No. 4580

Ramkinkar Baij 1910–1980
In life and in work, Ramkinkar Baij, India’s most original sculptor to many, was unique. Neither traditional nor academic, Ramkinkar’s importance lies in the fact that his body of work was essentially individualistic. This was all the more significant in an age dominated by the Bengal Revivalist spirit. The artists of his time belonged to two schools—those of the Bengal Revivalist School who had evolved a nationalistic and mystical ideal and those who adhered to the strict academic traditions of the West. Ramkinkar’s work was pioneering and personal. His sculptures were characterized by tremendous energy, exuberant and reaching to the heavens. One could see the almost surging movement of growth and the figures and forms were earthy and dynamic. Born in a Bengal village, Ramkinkar never moved far from his roots. His works have a marked out-of-doors quality; they were created on location and so evolved as a part of their context. The forms, whether in cement, plaster or stone, set their own laws. He used an idiom which is joyous and vital, and whether representational, stylized or abstract, the forms have the quality of surging growth.

Untitled
pen & ink on paper
11.5cm x 16.5cm | 4.5" x 6.5"
undated | Con No. 1722

Landscape
water colour on paper
20.4cm x 23.5cm | 8" x 9.25"
undated | Con No. 1736

A. Balasubramaniam 1971–current
A chance conversation on a train led this Madras village boy to the Government College of Fine arts, Madras. Journeys, rather than arrivals, would continue to resonate in his work. In short seven years, Balasubramaniam, known to all as Bala, has travelled through several countries and continents. His international exposure, coupled with his strong roots in a south Indian cultural ethos, has allowed Bala to leapfrog trends that continue to engage his contemporaries. Already, he has produced a significant and daring body of work that seems equally at home in sculpture, printmaking and mixed media. The materials employed vary in form and content, moving between, plaster, silkscreen prints and paper relief. From a purely Indian perspective, it appears as if Bala has leaped out from the confines of his context and landed squarely outside the strict formalism of the modernists.

Sumitro Basak 1975–current
Sumitro Basak creates an ambiguous world—there are either true “false” realities or false “true” realities. His forms are constructed, collaged out of materials actually meant for celebratory purposes. However, the world the artist creates out of them is not about celebration—it is filled with shadows and fragments of paper, suggesting a relationship to a fragment of a memory. The artist himself describes his work as a “thin world created out of various shapes of varied colours and textures.” Basak’s “people” are amorphous forms, they change and shift and activate spaces randomly. Much like children’s art which is, one suspects, the language Basak is inspired by. But his training in formal art at Santiniketan’s Kala Bhavan lends his work rationality and multiple layers of interpretation although apparently simple in expression. There is a tension between what is seen and unseen, a sense of a lurking presence. In many ways these unfilled areas complete or add to the spatial complexity; he creates this with minimal forms by making the empty spaces a part of the “picture”.

Freedom
acrylic on canvas (triptych)
183.3cm x 366cm | 72" x 144"
2006 | Con No. 4489

Aaaaaaa...-1
acrylic on canvas
183cm x 168cm | 72" x 66"
2007 | Con No. 4603

Manjit Bawa 1941–current
For Manjit Bawa, one of India’s best-known painters and a global citizen from his student days spent at the Delhi School of Art and London School of Painting, the source of inspiration is his native Punjab—Pahari miniature traditions, folklore, love songs of Heer Ranjha and Sohni Mahiwal, Krishna legends and the mystical poetry of the Sufi mystics like Bula Shah. Manjit’s approach to both figures and colours is highly daring. His pastoral landscapes are free from any Western influence and bear traces of the Pahari painting tradition. Manjit’s own poetic vision comes into play with his use of colours and forms. His figures are boneless and puffy, painted in soft, light hues set against a flat brilliantly coloured background of vivid greens, purples, reds and magenta. The Krishna-like youth with a flute, the enthralled cattle, the cloud-like lion, the moustachioed hero and the incandescent vegetation, all coalesce to create an illusion of an Arcadia where man and beast share a deep affinity and are involved in a “choreography” of small indolent movements.

Sufi Saint
oil on canvas
139.7cm x 116cm | 55" x 45"
2003 | Con No. 3199

Jyoti Bhatt 1934–current
Jyoti Bhatt’s mission as a painter and a graphic artist is to preserve and seek inspiration from the fast-disappearing folk art traditions of rural India. Since the Seventies, Bhatt, a member of Group 1890, has been inspired by the colourful, stylized motifs of cross-stitch embroidery from his native Saurashtra, Rangoli motifs of birds, animals, the sun and the moon, hand and feet impressions as well as traditional calligraphic ideograms. Bhatt has used all these motifs in his work and, yet, broken tradition. He has been successful in creating a new visual vocabulary of contemporary abstract design and is recognized as one of India’s major authorities on folk designs. A talented photographer, he has recently published a book of photographs on the traditional art and designs of rural India.

A Reliquary
acrylic paints on board
24cm x 43cm | 9.5" x 17"
2002 | Con No. 2643

Bikash Bhattacharjee 1940–2006
With Bikash Bhattacharjee’s untimely death in 2006, India lost one of its finest exponents of the Western realist and surrealist tradition. And Calcutta one of its best storytellers. Born in Calcutta a few years before the Partition and its attendant communal killings, Bikash also lost his father as a child. The times and the personal struggle for survival left him with a deep sense of insecurity as well as an empathy for the underprivileged who often featured in his works. A diehard Calcuttan all his life, Bikash depicted in his paintings the life of the average middle-class Bengali—their aspirations, superstitions, hypocrisy and corruption, and even the violence that is endemic to the city. The artist had complete control over all mediums—oil, acrylic, water colour, conte and collage—but it was his ability to penetrate and portray inner psychological undercurrents that made him one of India’s most powerful contemporary artists. Widely and justly acclaimed for his ability to juxtapose the real with the unreal, he created in his works a world of haunting and hypnotic imagery.

Wounded Family
graphite & conte on canvas
152cm x 165cm | 60" x 65"
1999 | Con No. 2276

Bhuribai 1968–current
The art form practised by Bhuribai is no less than Picasso’s, so believed J. Swaminathan, a founder member of Bharat Bhavan and a major artist himself. Little wonder that Swaminathan spared no effort to bring tribal Bhuribai and her little known Bheeli painting to public attention. Today, Bhuribai is an internationally acclaimed artist who has participated in exhibitions in India and abroad, most recently at Sotheby’s, New York. Bhuribai’s genius lay in transforming a traditional form, practised by tribal communities in Madhya Pradesh and painted by hand on the mud walls of their homes using natural colours, by putting it on canvas using acrylic and paint brush. Her work is imaginative and informed by nature, something close to Bhuribai. With no experience of formal education, Bhuribai proves that although the tradition is ancient, it is accommodative to new medium.

Fish, Tortoise and Rhythm
acrylic on canvas
177.8cm x 236.2cm | 70" x 93"
2007 | Con No. 4629

Arun Bose 1934–2007
Arun Bose grew up in modern India and lived and worked in New York. Yet, his images of deserted old buildings with courtyards, terraces with occasional peacocks or their shadows silhouetted against old walls seem haunted by memories of a medieval India. He used layers of paints which he occasionally rubbed with a rag dipped in alcohol to achieve he texture of old, worn stones. The charm of Arun Bose’s paintings, however, lies in their smooth lacquer-like finish and immaculate craftsmanship. “Shadow,’ he used to say, “is much more mysterious than life. If I see life, I see everything. But if I see shadow, only the silhouette—the rest you imagine. I like mystery.”

Royal Entrance
viscosity etching (a/p)
76cm x 56.7cm | 30" x 22.25"
undated | Con No. 3229

Nandalal Bose 1882–1966
Nandalal Bose was a fine artist, a great teacher and an early populariser of folk art and craft traditions. But to many his greatest contribution lay in restoring the use of “form” in modern Indian art. With innate versatility and draftsmanship, he explored several craft traditions, techniques and styles to give a masterly dimension to his own creative expression. His oeuvre thus includes all manners of work ranging from murals to embroidery, stage décor to fresh flower jewellery, and so on. As a student of Abanindranath Tagore in the Government School of Arts, Calcutta, he followed and propagated the ideals of the Bengal School. Though this preoccupation persisted, his direct acquaintance with A.K. Coomaraswamy, Sister Nivedita, Rabindranath Tagore and their philosophical moorings led him to form his own style and creative ethics. Later, an association with Gandhi and Gandhian ideals in the 1930s added a new dimension to Nandalal’s understanding of art and its function in society. This realization is apparent in the Haripura poster series—paintings that differ vastly from his earlier works in their manner and spirit. An inspiring teacher, mastermoshai Nandalal’s career began at the Vichitra Studio in Calcutta and ended as the principal of Kala Bhavan, Santiniketan, where he had joined in 1923.

Flood
water colour on paper
21.5cm x 27.5cm | 8.5" x 11"
1949 | from private collection

Shreyasi Chatterjee 1960–current
In Shreyasi Chatterjee’s art the idiom “a stitch in time saves nine” takes on a profound metaphorical meaning. Particularly in the context of a woman’s role as a wife, a mother and an individual. It is usually the woman who mends or improves things and makes them acceptable, often for reasons of security, thereby getting a layered sense of humanity and sensitivity. Shreyasi uses the simple stitch to animate surfaces and perhaps also suggest the steps of human thought. “At one level I am trying to appropriate the language of creative craft so that it assumes a metaphorical significance,” says Shreyasi. But Shreyasi’s work is not just metaphorical, it also has the architectural elements of a cityscape. And although Shreyasi’s paintings are deeply contemplative, they are essentially celebratory as well as being strongly gendered. After training at Kala Bhavan, Santiniketan, and Goldsmith’s College, London, Shreyasi has settled in Calcutta but is known everywhere as one of India’s cutting-edge artists working on serious post-modern issues and experimenting with indigenous art practices.

Stone, Water, Cows, Butterflies
acrylic, stitch, applique & pen on canvas
111.8cm x 145cm | 44" x 57"
2007 | Con No. 4518

The Holy Dip-2
acrylic, embroidery, applique & pen on canvas
141.5cm x 102cm | 55.75" x 40"
2007 | Con No. 4762

Swarna Chitrakar 1974–current
Swarna Chitrakar is a vital force among her generation. Raised in Medinipur district in West Bengal amongst patuas (pat painters), she is already a remarkable success with exhibitions in India and abroad, most recently at Sotheby’s in New York and the Museum of International Folk Art in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Taught by her mother’s brother, Dukhushyam Chitrakar, who is the guru of all the pat painters in her village, she is today the best known narrative scroll painter and singer in West Bengal. Although minimally educated, Swarna’s work displays an acute sense of engagement with the world at large. Her art goes beyond traditional themes and genres, exploring the intersecting styles of rural Bengali scroll painting (pat), urban Kalighat style and Bihari Madhubani painting.

An Inspiration
fabric paint on canvas
116.8cm x 202cm | 46" x 80"
2007 | Con No. 4664

Jogen Chowdhury 1939–current
Jogen Chowdhury was popular even when he was a student at the Government College of Art & Craft, Calcutta, and subsequently at Ecole Nationale Superieure des Beaux Arts, Paris. Today, Jogen is one painter who has inspired young artists of contemporary India in a big way. This is what R. Siva Kumar, the reputed art historian, has said about Jogen’s works: “The pulse and rhythm of Jogen Chowdhury’s art comes from a filial affinity to nature and milieu. In Chowdhury’s more recent works the sensory experiences of cloth, bolsters, sofas and the human body are cross-projected to produce an uncanny world of transubstantiated tumescence and flaccidness. Mnemic displacements and personal associations add to the symbolic ambivalence of his motifs, making his images come closer to inexplicable experiences than to explicit signs. In the postures of some figures we feel an animal sentience, in the ripe anatomy of others we savour a fruity succulence. The figures are wrought by a combination of decorative wilfulness and expressive distortion and are imbued with an effusive sensuality. Chowdhury’s art is rich in suggestions; it is to be apprehended without bracketing our fund of knowledge, experience or memories, but also cannot be narrativised without trivializing it, without depleting its sensory particularities.”

Monument to the Dead
pastels on canvas
91.5cm x 213.5cm | 36" x 84"
2006 | Con No. 4012

Amitava Das 1947–current
A true midnight’s child, Amitava Das considers painting to be a physical process. He enjoys working on paper as it has the advantage of immediacy. Medium is a very important aspect of Amitava’s work. “Similar images in different media produce different manifestations. Every medium speaks distinctly in its own language,” he says. The work of art for him, whether abstract or figurative, should reflect the experience of the artist. His current works often dwell on juxtaposing “opposites” within a common frame. His works feature exquisite textures and is often multi-layered, both in spirit and essence. Amitava studied drawing and painting at the College of Art, New Delhi. Since his first solo exhibition in 1969 he has participated in several exhibitions in India and abroad. He has also co-curated a contemporary Indian art show entitled ‘The Yellow Deity’ for the National Gallery of Modern Art, New Delhi, and Museum of Contemporary Art/Ludwig Museum, Budapest, Hungary.

Jonaki (Fire-flies)
acrylic & oil on canvas
121.7cm x 191.5cm | 48" x 36"
2006 | Con No. 4436

Vasudev S. Gaitonde 1924–2001
Vasudev S. Gaitonde is said to have pioneered non-objective painting in modern Indian art. An introvert and a loner by temperament, some of the major influences on him as a painter were Zen Buddhism, as well as the paintings of “poet-cum-visionary” non-objective painters like Paul Klee, Wassily Kandinsky and Joan Miro. All this helped Gaitonde create his own distinctive vocabulary that profoundly inspired a whole new generation of younger painters. Gaitonde’s large works on canvas are mostly monochromatic. The flat, two-dimensional pictorial space is held by what seem like floating forms, evoking a sense of vast space and introspective silence expressed in the paintings of the Far East. According to art critic Dhyaneshwar Nadkarni, there is an “evocative power” in Gaitonde’s paintings “which operates on more than one level”. There is a sense of “atmosphere, there is an approximation of music and, what is most important, there is a throbbing mystery about the very process of viewing and responding, as if one is sucked into some still centre of hitherto unknown experience.”

Untitled
oil on canvas
139.5cm x 101.5cm | 55" x 40"
1996 | Con No. TL-138

Jaya Ganguly 1958–current
Jaya Ganguly graduated from the Indian College of Art, Calcutta, as recently as 1980, but is already widely known for her exceptional figurative expressions. Her works depict dream images which border on the grotesque but are strangely beautiful. The figures are surreal, distorted and express a certain inner torment. Jaya does not like verbalizing her creative process. In her early creative expressions of the nineteen eighties she was greatly inspired by the goddess Kali and the world around Kalighat where she spent much of her childhood. “In my early paintings the Mother Kali would appear sometimes as a person or the most ordinary women would resemble HER—and even parody HER divine gestures,” says Jaya. However, over time and with personal tragedies impinging on her life, Jaya changed as a person. “The movement is away from emotional chaos to a balanced cosmos. Colours can still splinter, group and bond as sub-particles to create shapes that finally assume significance of form,” she feels. Jaya has participated in several prestigious projects in India and abroad.

Untitled
mixed media on canvas
203.3cm x 150cm | 80" x 59"
2007 | Con No. 4654

Debraj Goswami 1973–current
Bachelors from Kolkata and Masters at the Faculty of Fine Arts, M.S. University, Baroda, is the preferred option for young art students these days. Young Debraj Goswami is a fine example of the fusion of these two creative centres on two sides of the country. Debraj uses fragments from the much talked about arts of the past as metaphors to conjure up his statements. He embellishes them with a set of archetypal images, like fingers, nails and bulbs. A pointed finger figures in his paintings as a recurrent motif as does the nail. His enigmatic manner dissolves the borderline between awakening and dreaming. His is a somnambulist’s perilous journey through the corridors of the unconscious.

Loktarua (Scare-human)
acrylic on canvas
121.9cm x 91.4cm | 48" x 36"
2007 | Con No. 4763

Subodh Gupta 1964–current
Subodh Gupta may be a small-town boy but he can think big, huge in fact. And has dazzled the world with the size, shape and brilliance of his creations. This is how Peter Nagy enthuses about him: “Subodh Gupta’s works combine a theatrical sense of scale along with a performative aspect. Much as Gandhi was able to galvanize precise historical moments and socio-political struggles around the simplest of symbols (as in his use of salt and handloomed cloth), Gupta has repeatedly used steel kitchen utensils, cows and cow-dung, and religious iconographies in a number of ways and in a variety of settings. His use of cow-dung, for instance, in paintings, sculptures, installations and performance works, speaks of the anxious terrains inhabited by Indians within their own country and their nation’s place within a globalizing culture. Gupta has devised a strategic language through his art which can accommodate both international dialogues of forms and materials while addressing subjects of importance to his home, family and immediate community. He has found a way to speak of the local to the global and to teach the disenfranchised the language of the empowered.”

Untitled
oil on canvas
167.5cm x 229cm | 66" x 90"
2006 | Con No. 4343